


Laundry Boy

by GhostFox



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, M/M, Mostly Fluff, Oneshot, POV Kageyama Tobio
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-19
Updated: 2016-07-19
Packaged: 2018-07-25 12:34:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7533004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostFox/pseuds/GhostFox
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Please tell me, were you real, or just a dream?<br/>You meet some interesting people in a laundromat at 4AM</p>
            </blockquote>





	Laundry Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Just a little oneshot I had rolling around in my head! Enjoy!
> 
> Inspired by [this](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuW5ox_pJUA)

“Tearing your dresser apart and yelling with that foul mouth of yours while I’m trying to sleep is not going to solve your problems, Tobio,” Oikawa says from his bed in the corner of our dorm room, lifting up the pillow he smashed over his face slightly to look at me and sigh.

“I have nothing clean to wear in the morning,” I breathe, dropping the last of my dirty clothes into the giant pile on the floor after sniffing it and wrinkling my nose, shoulders limp with defeat.  “I am so _fucked._ ”

“Haven’t you had this interview scheduled for a week?”

“Yes…,”

“Then don’t you think you would’ve prepared for it, umm, I don’t know,” he grumbles, pulling one arm free from his blankets to check his watch, “sometime earlier than _2am the night before_?”

“You know what, you would think so but as you’ve already pointed out what a huge fucking idiot I am it’s not going to help anything now,” I spit, dropping to the floor and putting my head in my hands. Getting this job at the public library down the street from my university was really important to me, the final break I needed to stop relying so heavily on my parents for my living situation, but now I’m going to show up smelling like a rotten onion in clothes that look like they were pulled from the bottom of a hamper (because they were). I let out a groan and fall backwards, throwing an arm over my face as the smell from the pile of clothes hits my nostrils.

“Just kill me now, Oikawa. Give me a merciful death.”

“Why don’t you stop whining and just wash your clothes?” He asks, pushing the pillow back over his face. “And let me sleep. Some of us have class in the morning, you know.”

“I can’t use the dorm washers I lost my ID and no one is down there to let me in,” I groan, sitting up suddenly as an idea pops in my head. “Can I use yours?”

“No.”

“You’re such a dick,” I mumble, earning a pillow to the face. “Ow! What gives?”

“Just go to a Laundromat and shut the hell up already.” His voice is muffled as he slides down beneath his blankets.

“A Laundromat?” I imagine the layout of our small town in my head, mapping out where the closest one could be. “Isn’t that where people get mugged and murdered over a stack of quarters and some powder detergent?”

“Yeah, probably. But your options right now are potential stabbing and being shoved into a broken dryer or showing up to the only job interview you could land in two months smelling like a dog’s ass had sex with a packet of nacho cheese someone left in a dumpster outside the taco bell.” I cringe as Oikawa hits the smell on its disgusting head and he laughs at his own joke.

“Fine,” I mutter, shoving what clothes I can fit back into the hamper and standing to grab my keys and wallet from my desk, “but if I call you and all you hear is muffled screams and gurgling noises you’ll know what happened.”

“I look forward to it.”

“Fuck you,” I smirk, slipping my shoes on and opening the dorm door with the hamper hoisted in one hand.

“God, just _GO ALREADY_.”

Something hits the door with a loud thud just as I close it. I don’t know what Oikawa had in reaching distance from his bed heavy enough to make that sound but I’m sure it wouldn’t have felt nice smacking into my head.

The dorm hallway, if possible, smells worse than the hamper in my hands. It’s almost incredible the type of disgusting messes that get created when you cram over a hundred teenage guys in one building, especially when they’re all high on the false sense of independence that comes with just starting college. I once walked in on a group of them having a contest in the bathroom to see who could accurately pee in the sink from farthest across the bathroom. Suga, a senior who is the only reason no one in this building has died in a pile of their own filth yet, almost had a heart attack.

Despite being late Sunday night one of the doors at the end of the hall is wide open, spilling yellow light into the dim hallway and loud music vibrating the floor. Just before I pass it a slice of pizza flies out inches from my face, hitting the door across the hall with a wet slap.

“Dude! I was eating that!” A voice yells from inside and I peek my head around to find Tanaka looking confused up at some big beefy guy with white hair that I’ve never seen before and Noya standing behind him seizing the big guy up.

“I thought I saw a bug on it,” the big guy shrugs.

“That was a mushroom!”

I slip by unnoticed, not wanted to be dragged into anything else is going on in there, and round the corner just as I hear the door the pizza hit open and Suga start yelling. “Do you guys have any idea what time it is? There’s class tomorrow!”

“Suga, why are you in Daichi’s room?”

“Go to bed!”

I slap my free hand over my mouth to muffle the laughter I can’t stop, knowing I’ll never make it to the Laundromat if Suga finds me out in the hall so late. Partygoers start filing out of the room, spilling into the halls and returning to their own dorms so I make it to the stairs easily without being spotted. Downstairs is so much calmer, the halls quiet and empty like you’d expect this late, but there’s a sense of loneliness to them too. No little sticky notes stuck to friends’ doors or crude drawings of each other on the bulletin boards next to party announcements like on my floor, which begs the question if we’re the weird ones. But at least the smell is better.

There are no people in the parking lot outside, only empty cars reflecting the starry sky in their dirty windshields and streetlamps building a stark path amongst the shadows. Campus is odd when it’s empty, so much bigger than it seems when the sidewalks are bursting with too many people trying to go too many different ways. It makes me feel small, like a bug crawling between the buildings like cracks in the concrete.

The Laundromat turns out not to be very far away at all, just a few pavement blocks and graffiti ridden bus stops away, shining like a neon beacon through the haze of early morning desperation. I wish the donut place next door was open too but that probably wouldn’t be good for business.

Walking into the Laundromat is like walking into a sauna, except instead of steam it’s just dry miserable heat surrounding everything and emanating from every surface. Even the metal lids of the washers are an uncomfortable lukewarm. Sweat immediately beads on the back of my neck and looking around at the two other people standing around with sweaty hair stuck to the sides of their heads waiting to finish up and go home it only gets worse.

I walk up to the washing machine farthest away from the ones being used, somewhere off in the corner by an old arcade machine and a park bench that seems really out of place inside the building, and dump the entire hamper in. When I had left for the dorms two years ago my mom had given me a ton of pointers on how to separate my clothes but the good ol’ dump ‘em in method had gotten me this far and I’m not inclined to change that any time soon. After buying whatever soap looks the best from the little machine on the wall and shoving quarters into the little sliding metal contraption the washing machine starts, and I collapse on the park bench.

By the time the little red timer on the washer runs out and the thing lets out a god awful beeping signal the other two customers have left and I’ve played seventeen straight games of solitaire on my phone. I open the lid, the scent of cheap bathroom soap mixed with wet dog wafting up to my nose, and frown. They look clean, sort of, but the smell was the real problem. Returning to the soap machine I consider my choices more carefully this time.

“Alright, Tobio, let’s see. We’ve got fresh linen, that’s sounds good. Then there’s original fresh? That doesn’t sound true. They couldn’t have made the first fresh scent.” I trail the glass with my finger, squinting at the different colored boxes. “Floral fusion? Too flowery. Oh, Hawaiian aloha? Sounds exotic.”

“I like the lavender one. It works the best,” a voice says somewhere behind me, making me jump and smack the arm against the wall.

“Fuck! Ow,” I yell, grabbing my elbow with my opposite hand and turning around. “What?”

The voice, or rather the _person_ , in front of me laughs, slapping a hand over his mouth to hide the giggles that escape. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he says, shaking his head and making his wild orange hair bounce. “Is your arm okay?”

I want to say something intelligent like ‘oh yes, I’m fine thank you’ or ‘I’m sorry I don’t think we’ve met’ but what comes out of my mouth sounds something more like “Whaya…huh?”

The guy dissolves into giggles again, not even bothering to cover his mouth this time, tilting his head backward slightly and wrapping an arm around his middle. He’s small, coming up to about my shoulder height, and scrawny, but for some reason his presence seems to fill the room. Maybe it’s the heat or maybe it’s the way his birdsong laughter bounces off of the metal surfaces around us but my face flushes and my heart skips a beat.

“I shouldn’t laugh,” he says, wiping a tear from the corner of his eye. “But you should’ve seen your face! You look like you saw a ghost.”

“You, uh, surprised me it all,” I tell him, looking down nervously and trying to avoid meeting his honey brown eyes. “I didn’t think anyone else was here.”

“That’s because I just got here!” He points with his thumb to a pile of clothes sitting on top of a washer a few spots down from the one I’m using. “Anyway, the lavender is the best detergent in there but I’ve got some better stuff that actually works over here if you want to use it.”

“Oh,” I start, checking the coins in my hands and counting only enough to wash and dry the load I have. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“No problem!” He beams, extending a small hand to me. “I’m Hinata. Nice to meet you, _Tobio_.”

I blanch, realizing he heard me talking to myself and hesitate before grabbing his hand. “It’s Kageyama.”

“I like Tobio better,” he winks, turning and walking towards the machines.

I follow and he hands me a small purple bottle of detergent, a different brand than the ones in the machine but still lavender scented. “It takes about half a capful,” he tells me, starting to separate his clothes into two separate machines. It’s based on color, I think, watching as his slender fingers move deftly over the folds of cloth. Every piece of clothing he tosses in the washer looks spotless, as if he just bought them off some store shelf and brought them directly here to be washed and I’m suddenly self conscious of the mustard stain I know is still on my gray t-shirt and the hole in the knee of my jeans laying on top of the pile. I pour the designated amount of soap on them, the smell already a million times better, and slam the lid shut.

“Oops,” Hinata whispers to himself as he drops a white sock in with a dark blue shirt. He tries to reach in and get it but his arms don’t reach the bottom, and I watch amused as he hoists himself up, laying on his stomach across the rim and reaches in, legs bent in the air behind him as he struggles to keep his balance.

It’s the first time I stop to look at what he’s wearing, unsure of how I hadn’t noticed it immediately. His shirt is a white tank top, almost blindingly bright and exposing slender arms and a slight tan as if from a uniform of some sort since it shows in a small triangle between his collarbones too. That’s not the part that stands out though, it’s actually oddly vanilla compared to the almost neon yellow and blue running shorts underneath, showing off even more odd tan lines around his knees, and the hot pink flip flops on his feet. He’s a fashion disaster and yet, somehow, he looks perfect.

When both of our machines are going, the muffled sound of rushing water filling the space, I return to my spot on the park bench. I expect Hinata will do the same, find somewhere quiet to waste some time on his phone, but he follows me, hopping up onto the washer closest to the bench and smiling down at me, legs and pink flip flops swinging above the dingy tiled floor. “So what’s your story?”

“What?” I ask, confused for what feels like the hundredth time tonight.

“There has to be a reason you’re alone in a Laundromat at 4AM,” he explains, leaning back on his arms. “So what is it?”

He’s so straightforward, spitting out whatever he’s thinking, but for some reason I don’t mind. For some reason I like it. “I need clean clothes for an interview in the morning,” I tell him, shrugging to seem nonchalant. “How about you?”

“Isn’t it kind of late for that? You’d think you would have thought about that sooner,” he laughs, completely ignoring my question.

“Yeah, I know, I know, I’m an idiot,” I sigh, trying to sound annoyed even though I’m not. I just like the way it makes him pout.

“No, I just think it’s funny. Where’s the interview?”

“The library on Twelfth and C Street,” I tell him and his eyes light up with recognition.

“That’s near here! Do you live close by?” He’s slowly leaning forward more and more and I’m worried he’ll lose his balance but I leave it alone.

“Yeah, I go to school at the university down the street. I live on campus but my roommate wouldn’t let me us his ID to get into the washroom in the dorms.” I wonder why I’m telling him all of this as the words spill out of my mouth, but I take no action to stop them.

“He sounds charming,” Hinata says, knitting his eyebrows together in disapproval.

“Nah, I deserve it,” I shake my head, remembering why Oikawa was mad at me in the first place. “I borrowed his chemistry notes before our final and, uh, lost them in a very serious and tragic beer pong accident.”

“Well I hope you get it. The job I mean,” he beams, leaning back again just before he topples headfirst over the edge. “Even if you show up sleep deprived. Maybe the lavender scent will win them over.”

“I’m counting on it,” I smile; a real genuine smile that would make Oikawa shit his pants with surprise. I must be more tired than I thought. “So, uh, why are _you_ here?”

I almost expect him to skirt around the question again but he breaks out into another blinding smile that makes my heart flutter. “I always do my laundry at this time. You hear the best stories that way!”

Everything goes silent for a moment, even the washing machines stop spinning, and we both burst into laughter. I don’t know what it is; the heat, the hour, or the proximity to this new person I’m not sure is even a person at all but rather an ethereal being of light and joy, but everything feels right. He laughs that birdsong sound and I fall in love with every note.

And I know it’s stupid. I know that I know nothing about this person beyond his name and it’s been less than an hour but I can’t help it. He’s like a dream I don’t know I’m having, a beauty that only exists to me and only in this moment.

We chat a bit more, about other people he’s met during his late night laundry escapades and how some of them are not so friendly, about the other guys I hang around with at school and the type of trouble they always manage to pull me into. We talk about the stars and how they look tonight above a gentle haze of smog, about our favorite movies, about the silly 00’s pop playing softly on the radio. It’s so easy talking with Hinata, like my words belong to his ears and his to mine, and I’m disappointed when the washers buzz again.

Hinata starts shoving his clothes in a dryer but I freeze when I stick my hand into the barrel of the machine I used, finding all of the clothes still soaking wet and realizing I didn’t set it to have a spin cycle. “Ah, shit,” I mutter, shoulders falling. “Can I put these in the dryer like this?” I ask, holding up a pair of dripping socks for him to see.

“Well, you can,” he answers, trying not to smile. “But you probably shouldn’t. It’ll take forever to dry.”

“At this point I honestly don’t care,” I say, throwing the wet clothes into the closest dryer and ignoring the water dripping on the floor. Hinata watches as I put the last of my quarters in the machine and set it to the longest time it’ll go, and out of the corner of my eye I see him add more time to his own machine. I try to hide my smile but I’m pretty sure he sees it anyway.

“Is that Street Fighter?” He asks suddenly, running over to the arcade machine I forgot about in the corner, voice dripping with excitement.

“Uh, I think that’s what it said on the screen,” I mumble, following after him, trying to think if I know anything about Street Fighter.

“It is!” He yells, waving me closer and pointing to two little figures in a battle stance under the title. “Wanna play?”

“Sure,” I shrug, as if I could say no anyway.

He starts explaining the characters to me, speaking so fast I’m not sure if I’m actually meant to follow, and I just pick one called Ryu since his name is the only one I remembered. Hinata picks a girl named Chun-Li and hands me my ass in less than two minutes.

“I take it you’ve played this before,” I say, staring at the K.O. screen and shaking my head in amusement.

“A few times,” he laughs, shrugging innocently.

“I want a rematch,” I tell him and he nods, a competitive edge to the shine of his eyes.

I try my best, I really do, but he sweeps me in every match no matter how hard I try. I press the buttons as fast as I can but somehow he blocks all of my attacks and returns them tenfold.

“Goddamn!” I yell somewhere after the tenth match, dropping my head. “How do you do that?”

“You can’t just button smash,” he tells me, giving me a smug smile. “You have to plan your attacks. Here, let me show you.”

He reaches over and covers my hand that holds the joystick with his own smaller one, guiding my figure as a CPU fighter appears in front of him in the arena. I try to follow what he shows me and listen to the button combinations he explains but I am too busy feeling the warmth of his back against my chest, comforting despite the heat of the air. I’m too busy noticing his fingers wrapped around mine and the clean bright smell of his orange hair under my chin. I am too busy not breathing to take in a single word.

“See? Combos are the way to go. Got it?” He lets go and steps away too quickly, smiling at me again from the other side of the game front.

“Uh, yeah,” I lie.

“Ready for another round?” I nod but he reaches into his pocket and frowns. “I’m out of quarters. Do you have any more?”

“Oh, shit, yeah,” I say, realizing I’ve just been staring at him and nodding. I fumble for my wallet, finding only a $5 bill inside. “I’ll go make change.”

I step up to the coin machine and try to put the money it but it spits it right back out. I try again, and again and again, trying to straighten it out as best I can on the side of a washing machine, but it is just not having it.

“The machine won’t take my money,” I say dejectedly when I return; not wanting to see the disappointment I know will be on his face.

“That’s okay! The clothes are almost done anyway.”

My clothes still have a while to go when he pulls his out, and I’m terrified that he’s going to leave even though I know we’ll have to part ways eventually, but he just quietly folds them all into neat piles while I wait. When they finally come out close enough to dry to be wearable Hinata is finishing up his folding so I just shove the warm clothes in my hamper haphazardly.

“If you don’t fold those they’ll wrinkle,” he tells me, eyeing the crumpled mess.

“I’ll fold them when I get home,” I say, waving of his warnings. “Ready to go?”

“Yup!” He tucks the small piles of clothes under his arm and nods.

We walk out onto the street and Hinata starts off in the direction opposite of campus but I follow him anyway, falling into easy step beside him, silently thanking the wind for the slight breeze that feels amazing after the heat of the Laundromat. “Don’t you live that way?” he smirks, eyeing me from the side without actually turning his head.

“Let me walk you home?”

He stops, opening his mouth to speak, but the words never make it past his lips as golden light spills over the horizon and catches his attention. “Look, Tobio! The sun is rising!” He takes a deep breath, mouth open and eyes closed as if he can drink in the light, letting it fill him with the warmth of a new day.

He chatters on about how he loves to watch the sun rise and how much better it is to see if from outside instead of through a window or a picture. There’s nothing like seeing all that brightness for yourself, up close and personal, he tells me, and I know the feeling exactly.

Anxiety starts to fill my stomach the longer we walk, that inevitable end to this night coming faster than I wanted it to, but Hinata keeps trudging forward, oblivious to everything but the two of us.

“You know,” he says, pausing at a crosswalk to press the button and wait for traffic to stop so we can cross. “I think Kida is the most underrated Disney Princess. I mean, amazing design aside she was so cool! I mean,”

“Hinata-,”

“She sacrificed so much for her people,” he continues, taking off across the street as soon as the signal flashes. “That’s what a real princess is supposed to do!”

“Hinata!” I say again, needing to say something immediately before I burst, and he stops, turning to me in the middle of the crosswalk, the red light flashing ominously as it reminds us it could turn green at any moment.

“Huh?”

“Do you want to…watch that movie together some time? Or, another sunrise or play more Street Fighter or something?” I look down at the pavement nervously, spilling words out and hoping he’ll hear what I’m really trying to say.

“Are you asking me out on a date, Tobio?” I can hear the smirk in his voice and it fills me with something I try to disguise as confidence.

“I just don’t want to say goodbye. Not yet,” I admit, forcing myself to look up. “And I’m really glad I happened to be here tonight, that both of us did, and I hope that this was the type of story you were looking for.”

The stoplight turns green and cars start driving around us, honking as they pass but neither of us moves, standing still as statues in the middle of the road. And suddenly, before I know what’s happening Hinata’s arms are around my shoulders as he flings himself into me, clothes forgotten as we both drop them where we stand. His lips melt into mine and my arms snake around his back as I drink in the smell of lavender detergent and the taste of sunlight. The honking continues and drivers even lean out of their windows to yell at us but we don’t let go.

I don’t know how long it lasts. Hours? Days? That’s what it feels like but it is still not enough and finally he backs away, giggling when I don’t open my eyes, still stunned.

“This was exactly the kind of story I was looking for,” he says, voice mingling with the breeze, but when I open my eyes he’s gone.

“Hinata?” I turn where I stand, searching for a glimpse of orange or neon yellow but finding nothing. Ignoring traffic I grab my clothes hamper and sprint across the rest of the crosswalk, heart beating and panic filling my chest. Everything feels like a bubble bursting around me, like waking up from a dream I wasn’t ready to let go of.

I run half of the block, ducking my head in alleyways and behind buildings before I give up, defeat washing over me.

“You really were just a dream, weren’t you?” I whisper to myself, looking up at the sun as it barely clears the horizon, changing from gold and orange to the pale yellow of day.

I almost pass the crosswalk, planning to use the next one as to not taint the memories this one holds, but something draws me back down that path, and I realize what it is immediately.

Sitting perfectly in the center of the pavement, in the exact place Hinata kissed me, is a single hot pink flip flop. I pick it up and shove it in the clothes hamper and finish crossing, figuring I’ve tested my luck with traffic enough for one morning.

The walk back home is quiet, but I’m not lonely, and surprisingly I’m not sad either. I expected to be disappointed, for grief to fill my vision and take away all of the happiness Hinata had filled me with but it doesn’t. I feel light, rejuvenated, like the feeling after a long and well needed rest.

I don’t know if I’ll ever see Hinata again, or if I saw him at all in the first place, but I do know that I’ll never see the sunrise in the same way again, and that this will make for one hell of a story.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinking of starting a little collection of oneshots based on songs like this one as a brain buffer between other longer projects so if you liked this and think you'd like more shoot on over to [my tumblr](http://ghost--fox.tumblr.com/) and send me a song suggestion!


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